Reciprocating piston engines of the type mentioned here are known. They serve in particular as refrigerant compressors for regulating the passenger compartment temperature in motor vehicles. Reciprocating piston engines of this type have at least one piston supported in a moveable manner in a cylinder bore, which piston is set in motion via a pivot element that is swivel-mounted on the drive shaft of the reciprocating piston engine, which element is arranged in a drive chamber. The pivot element is connected to a guide body guided axially on the drive shaft of the reciprocating piston engine as well as also via a driving pin to the drive shaft. With a known reciprocating piston engine it is furthermore provided that spring forces of at least one return spring act on the pivot element. The spring forces thereby act in the direction of a starting position of the pivot element in which it is pivoted at a starting pivot angle to a plane on which the rotation axis of the drive shaft stands upright. The pivot element of the refrigerant compressor, which is preferably embodied without a coupling and thus permanently runs with the drive shaft of a motor vehicle, must have a speed-dependent minimum starting pivot angle so that the pivot element can pivot out at any time when the refrigerant compressor needs to provide a specific cooling capacity. In order to achieve a broad spread of the controlling range of the compressor depending on the drive chamber pressure change, the return spring must have the highest possible spring rigidity. However, it has been shown with the known reciprocating piston engines that a high spring rigidity of the return spring is an impediment to the easy pivoting of the pivot element.